Hey all,
We are just in the middle of our whirlwind week...
We flew into Delhi from Leh on the 28th which was much more relaxing than that crazy drive we are still trying to forget...Delhi redeemed itself a bit during the day...we took the brand new metro line(built for the commonwealth games) to the train station...It was so weird to go from the airport (also newly renovated for the games) and the metro, which are new and sparkling, to the filthy dirty, smells like feces and rotting garbage train station! Anyways, after waiting through a huge queue we finally got our trains sorted with only a minor inconvenience of a short bus ride in between...as we were walking down the streets of Delhi wasting time waiting for our train we thought--Wow, that worked out remarkably well for India, wonder what is going to go wrong--to start, our train to Agra was over an hour late (fairly typical of the trains here) but it meant we were going to get into Agra around midnight...then we read through our book and realized that the Taj Mahal, the ONLY reason we were going to Agra, was closed on Friday and we would be arriving Thursday midnight and leaving Friday evening--meaning we would not get to go into the Taj...then the train was delayed en route another hour which meant we got into Agra after 1AM...by the time we found reasonable accommodation, which entails going to and negotiating with several different guest houses, it was after 2AM...Since we couldn't go into the Taj we decided we should wake up for sunset to see it at its finest so we were up after 3 hours sleep at 5AM... after waiting for an hour we realized that the sun was not going to set through the fog and pollution of the morning...Although we still enjoyed being up at that time, with the city quiet except for the scampering feet of monkeys on tin roofs! And the Taj was still magnificent to look at, even from afar...we went back to bed for a few hours and then met up with our tuk-tuk driver from the previous night who was actually amazingly kind, which is surprising for a tuk-tuk driver(notorious for scamming tourists!) He drove us around giving us a guided tour of Agra--first to the park across the river from the Taj for an excellent Taj view, then to the baby Taj, a monument that looks very similar to the actual Taj but on a smaller scale, then to another Tomb, that is falling into disrepair, but was once covered with brilliant blue tiles (mom, you would've liked this one!) then around Agra fort, which we were too cheap to actually enter! We ended up having a really great day and we got to see the streets and some of the lesser known places of Agra--and the Taj seemed that much more imposing and special having not been allowed in...Our driver even helped us figure out our bus to get to our train to come here, to Varanasi! The train station in Tundla was fairly small, and I have a great picture of a typical Indian scene--newish electronic train schedule board on crumbling stone wall with a massive cow inside the station!
And now here, Varanasi...we arrived around 7AM and it was already stifling hot...walking through the narrow streets with our massive bags on drained every once of water out of us...we were quickly soaked and parched and in need of accommodation and luckily, without too much hassle (by Indian standards), we found a reasonable place with a peak-a-boo view down an alley of the Ganges and a rooftop restaurant with a panoramic view of the Ganges! Unfortunately, having arrived here in the middle of the monsoon, we quickly found out that the two things that everyone does when they come to Varanasi, take a boat down the Ganges and walk along the steps of the Ghats, would be impossible for us due to a swollen river that was flooding the steps and running too fast for safe row-boat navigation (I know, when has anyone in India ever cared about safety when they can make money! But apparently the orders came straight from the government and everyone is obeying...for now...)
Our fisrt day here we relaxed and tried to cool down for most of the day...we thought it was hot up north but it was nothing...up north it was a hot August day in BC, high 20's to low 30's and dry...now that we are back down here we have been really struggling...it is high 30's and the humidity is unbelievable...we are soaked from morning till...well the next morning! We actually never stop sweating! We spend most of midday in our room, with as few clothes on as possible, laying under our fan!(we haven't caved and paid for an AC room yet, though I do fantasize about them occasionally!)
The evening of the first day we went to a Hindu ceremony at one of the Ghats about 20 mins away from us...I got a red line painted down my forehead upon arrival from someone searching for donations...we refused to pay to go out in a boat and so we may have missed a bit of the ceremony but it was wonderful to just sit ont he steps and watch all of the people come down to the water, pray, take a dip or even drink the water (yuck! The Ganges is very sacred to Hindu's and they are meant to bathe and/or drink from it--but it is ridiculously polluted--there are 116 cities on the Ganges, not one of which has a sewer treatment plant--the safe level of fecal choliform bacteria in bathing water is 500 per some fluid measurement...the ganges has 1.5 million! Not to mention all of the dead bodies that are dumped into it! Varanasi is a very sacred place to die, and if you die here or are transported here after death, you will have your body bathed in the Ganges, then cremated on the shore at one of the burning Ghats in an open fire, and then have your ashes dumped in the Ganges...unless you are a child under ten, a pregnant woman, a sadu(holy man), you died from a white cobra bite, or you are an animal, in which case you are dumped directly into the Ganges without burning...) We were able to witness both the cremation process and the ceremony of a boat, full of chanting people, go out into the Ganges and dump a body overboard... Both seemed very strange...it was weird to see bodies put on a fire although many people in Canada undergo the same process....I guess it is just the public spectacle of something that we tend to keep private and unknown...at the same time, it felt like a more personal approach, with the family being present to mourn the body all the way through...
Our second day here, today, was another fairly calm day...we went on a walking tour with an old man from our guest house and he explained a bit about the Hindu religion while showing us some of the temples around the old town...it was a good way to see Varanasi as the streets are so convoluted and confusing that we are easily lost when alone....
Varanasi...
Narrow, 3 to 6 foot streets, crumbling 3+ story buildings on either side...
Uneven bricks or paving stones or dirt...
Motorcycles, scooters, bicycles squeezing past...
Piles of garbage, cow, dog, rat, human? feces and urine...
Dead rats, dead cockroaches, dead dogs...
Cows with ribs and hips jutting out, dogs with skin falling off, blocking the way...
Dogs growling, cows mooing, horns beeping, people yelling...
Substances unknown, squishing under your feet, flip-flopping up the back of your leg...
Putrid, rotten smells, beyond belief, wafting through...
Garbage, feces, food, rotting, burning stench...
These are the streets, these are the sights, these are the sounds and these are the smells...
Enjoyable none-the-less!
We are leaving here early tomorrow morning...train to Gorakhpur then bus to the Nepali border...then, hopefully, if time allows, to Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha...then on to Kathmandu the next day to meet the Irish couple for our trek--the Tamang Heritage trail! We will once again be away from internet for a bit as we transit but hopefully we will update once before our 5 day trek...
We are missing everyone and thinking about home--about my family reunion this weekend--fantasizing about soda bread with butter and cheese! I hope it went well without us!
Bye for now,
Taylor and Brie
We are just in the middle of our whirlwind week...
We flew into Delhi from Leh on the 28th which was much more relaxing than that crazy drive we are still trying to forget...Delhi redeemed itself a bit during the day...we took the brand new metro line(built for the commonwealth games) to the train station...It was so weird to go from the airport (also newly renovated for the games) and the metro, which are new and sparkling, to the filthy dirty, smells like feces and rotting garbage train station! Anyways, after waiting through a huge queue we finally got our trains sorted with only a minor inconvenience of a short bus ride in between...as we were walking down the streets of Delhi wasting time waiting for our train we thought--Wow, that worked out remarkably well for India, wonder what is going to go wrong--to start, our train to Agra was over an hour late (fairly typical of the trains here) but it meant we were going to get into Agra around midnight...then we read through our book and realized that the Taj Mahal, the ONLY reason we were going to Agra, was closed on Friday and we would be arriving Thursday midnight and leaving Friday evening--meaning we would not get to go into the Taj...then the train was delayed en route another hour which meant we got into Agra after 1AM...by the time we found reasonable accommodation, which entails going to and negotiating with several different guest houses, it was after 2AM...Since we couldn't go into the Taj we decided we should wake up for sunset to see it at its finest so we were up after 3 hours sleep at 5AM... after waiting for an hour we realized that the sun was not going to set through the fog and pollution of the morning...Although we still enjoyed being up at that time, with the city quiet except for the scampering feet of monkeys on tin roofs! And the Taj was still magnificent to look at, even from afar...we went back to bed for a few hours and then met up with our tuk-tuk driver from the previous night who was actually amazingly kind, which is surprising for a tuk-tuk driver(notorious for scamming tourists!) He drove us around giving us a guided tour of Agra--first to the park across the river from the Taj for an excellent Taj view, then to the baby Taj, a monument that looks very similar to the actual Taj but on a smaller scale, then to another Tomb, that is falling into disrepair, but was once covered with brilliant blue tiles (mom, you would've liked this one!) then around Agra fort, which we were too cheap to actually enter! We ended up having a really great day and we got to see the streets and some of the lesser known places of Agra--and the Taj seemed that much more imposing and special having not been allowed in...Our driver even helped us figure out our bus to get to our train to come here, to Varanasi! The train station in Tundla was fairly small, and I have a great picture of a typical Indian scene--newish electronic train schedule board on crumbling stone wall with a massive cow inside the station!
And now here, Varanasi...we arrived around 7AM and it was already stifling hot...walking through the narrow streets with our massive bags on drained every once of water out of us...we were quickly soaked and parched and in need of accommodation and luckily, without too much hassle (by Indian standards), we found a reasonable place with a peak-a-boo view down an alley of the Ganges and a rooftop restaurant with a panoramic view of the Ganges! Unfortunately, having arrived here in the middle of the monsoon, we quickly found out that the two things that everyone does when they come to Varanasi, take a boat down the Ganges and walk along the steps of the Ghats, would be impossible for us due to a swollen river that was flooding the steps and running too fast for safe row-boat navigation (I know, when has anyone in India ever cared about safety when they can make money! But apparently the orders came straight from the government and everyone is obeying...for now...)
Our fisrt day here we relaxed and tried to cool down for most of the day...we thought it was hot up north but it was nothing...up north it was a hot August day in BC, high 20's to low 30's and dry...now that we are back down here we have been really struggling...it is high 30's and the humidity is unbelievable...we are soaked from morning till...well the next morning! We actually never stop sweating! We spend most of midday in our room, with as few clothes on as possible, laying under our fan!(we haven't caved and paid for an AC room yet, though I do fantasize about them occasionally!)
The evening of the first day we went to a Hindu ceremony at one of the Ghats about 20 mins away from us...I got a red line painted down my forehead upon arrival from someone searching for donations...we refused to pay to go out in a boat and so we may have missed a bit of the ceremony but it was wonderful to just sit ont he steps and watch all of the people come down to the water, pray, take a dip or even drink the water (yuck! The Ganges is very sacred to Hindu's and they are meant to bathe and/or drink from it--but it is ridiculously polluted--there are 116 cities on the Ganges, not one of which has a sewer treatment plant--the safe level of fecal choliform bacteria in bathing water is 500 per some fluid measurement...the ganges has 1.5 million! Not to mention all of the dead bodies that are dumped into it! Varanasi is a very sacred place to die, and if you die here or are transported here after death, you will have your body bathed in the Ganges, then cremated on the shore at one of the burning Ghats in an open fire, and then have your ashes dumped in the Ganges...unless you are a child under ten, a pregnant woman, a sadu(holy man), you died from a white cobra bite, or you are an animal, in which case you are dumped directly into the Ganges without burning...) We were able to witness both the cremation process and the ceremony of a boat, full of chanting people, go out into the Ganges and dump a body overboard... Both seemed very strange...it was weird to see bodies put on a fire although many people in Canada undergo the same process....I guess it is just the public spectacle of something that we tend to keep private and unknown...at the same time, it felt like a more personal approach, with the family being present to mourn the body all the way through...
Our second day here, today, was another fairly calm day...we went on a walking tour with an old man from our guest house and he explained a bit about the Hindu religion while showing us some of the temples around the old town...it was a good way to see Varanasi as the streets are so convoluted and confusing that we are easily lost when alone....
Varanasi...
Narrow, 3 to 6 foot streets, crumbling 3+ story buildings on either side...
Uneven bricks or paving stones or dirt...
Motorcycles, scooters, bicycles squeezing past...
Piles of garbage, cow, dog, rat, human? feces and urine...
Dead rats, dead cockroaches, dead dogs...
Cows with ribs and hips jutting out, dogs with skin falling off, blocking the way...
Dogs growling, cows mooing, horns beeping, people yelling...
Substances unknown, squishing under your feet, flip-flopping up the back of your leg...
Putrid, rotten smells, beyond belief, wafting through...
Garbage, feces, food, rotting, burning stench...
These are the streets, these are the sights, these are the sounds and these are the smells...
Enjoyable none-the-less!
We are leaving here early tomorrow morning...train to Gorakhpur then bus to the Nepali border...then, hopefully, if time allows, to Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha...then on to Kathmandu the next day to meet the Irish couple for our trek--the Tamang Heritage trail! We will once again be away from internet for a bit as we transit but hopefully we will update once before our 5 day trek...
We are missing everyone and thinking about home--about my family reunion this weekend--fantasizing about soda bread with butter and cheese! I hope it went well without us!
Bye for now,
Taylor and Brie
